Alan Kohler is one of Australia’s most experienced business commentators. Alan has been a trusted source of investment advice to Australians for many years, and in 2005 he founded Eureka Report - Australia’s #1 online investment report. Along with Robert Gottliebsen and Stephen Bartholomeusz, Alan also founded Business Spectator, the popular business news and commentary website. Alan is the regular finance presenter on the ABC News and producer of the popular nightly graph (or two).

Victoria deregulated retail power pricing in 2009 and since then power retailers' own charges have grown by 200% (independent of network and power generation costs). This makes no sense and competition is clearly not working.

One of the world's largest coal companies is haemorrhaging red ink. With billions in debt, Australian regulators need to pay closer attention to its lack of provisions to fund mine rehabilitation, or it could be taxpayers footing the bill.

A minor administrative decision surrounding what to do about $100m of left over cash from repeal of the carbon price reveals how the government could meet its emission reduction targets while barely lifting a finger.

The Abbott Government’s own expert adviser on climate policy has revealed that Labor’s emissions trading scheme was “strikingly similar” to the Coalition’s Direct Action scheme. Does this mean the Abbott Government is also about to introduce a carbon tax by stealth?

Behavioural economics has provided a vast improvement in our thinking about economic problems. Yet nothing in this research suggests governments should limit themselves to gently nudging us to better options, while leaving us free to make dumb choices too.

The Energy Supply Association has released a report spruiking the benefits of a shift to electric and natural gas fuelled vehicles, with bullish predictions of uptake even if government does little to encourage them.

Labor's commitment to 50% share of renewables in our electricity supply by 2030 is ambitious. Yet when assessed against the need to match the emission reduction pledges of the US and Canada, we'll need an awful lot else too.

Climate Spectator will be moving to concentrate on areas where we provide a distinct point of view and provide a more distilled summary of events that are most important in the business and politics of energy and climate change.

The media loves a good scary story about a new tax, especially one back from the dead. Yet because we often pay our power bills like mindless zombies, power retailers are hitting our wallet with a cost 2½ times bigger than the carbon price.

The reason there is little incentive to export power to the grid is because as far as the poles and wires businesses are concerned it doesn't matter whether a generator is 100 kilometres away or just 10 metres up the road. A new regulatory rule could change this.

The Environment Minister is now resorting to a 2nd reading speech to suggest the government’s demand that the clean energy bank not fund wind and rooftop solar is nothing more than ensuring it fulfils its intended purpose.

Labor is probably cowering in fear after Australia's two most-read newspapers ran stories warning of a twin carbon tax – one to hit electricity and another for everyone else. Yet it’s actually a policy dreamed-up by the Abbott Government.

The solar resource, plus underlying power prices, is high in Queensland and there’s still some reasonable power demand growth thanks to the start-up of LNG plants. It may explain the games power gen-tailers are playing.